Zac Quinn 
Putting a supercharger on your wife’s daily driver isn’t necessarily something most (sane) people would do. However, that’s precisely what Alex, the host of the LegitStreetCars Youtube channel, has done—telling his wife that he would need the car for two days to do some maintenance on it. During those 2 days, he and his friend Peter installed a Magnuson 2650 supercharger, cleaned the engine, and replaced the spark plugs to greatly improve the performance of her fourth-generation Cadillac Escalade. Perhaps he didn’t want to wait for the upcoming Escalade-V?
Before the build could start, Alex took his wife’s Cadillac Escalade to the dyno to get a baseline for the numbers. Since the engine was a bit dirty after being driven 80,000+ miles, the power output was slightly down from a brand new Escalade. The best run they did stock was 301.8 horsepower to the wheels. After two 8 hour days of work, cleaning the engine, and installing the supercharger, the Escalade saw an increase of around 160 ponies bringing the total power output to just over 460 hp to the wheels. Not the crank, the wheels.
Supercharged Cadillac Escalade: Reaction
After the modification was complete, Alex set up the reveal for his wife by making her think they were recording an advertisement to test a phone holder. Next, he told his wife to floor her Cadillac Escalade, and as you see in her reaction video, it was quite a surprise. She later noted that the engine “whistled,” which was what gave her a direct indication that he had done something significant to her car. Not long after, she asked what cars she would likely be able to race and beat with the new mods and seemed very proud to be the owner of a sleeper.
While supercharging his wife’s Escalade was mainly a project for Alex’s enjoyment, it looks like his wife is thrilled with the results, and they intend on taking her out to drag race it once the track opens back up. The most remarkable thing about the Magnuson supercharger is likely that when driving the car normally, absolutely no one (not even the driver) could tell that there was a supercharger bolted to the engine. But when you need that extra power, it’s right there waiting for you to spur the horses and speed off down the road.
While you would have a bad time attempting to supercharge today’s Escalade without some serious workaround thanks to its encrypted ECU, there is a Cadillac Escalade-V coming soon, and we expect it to deliver as much as 650 crank horsepower. So stay tuned for that.
